Work Text:
“You look tired.”
Nyr, who had been scrubbing at the bridge of his nose just moments before, finds himself smiling at the missive in his hand. Word from Josephine about the Winter Palace. News of political unrest and the potential showing of the Inquisition’s hand. Nothing good whatsoever.
“When do I not?” he asks, settling the parchment on his desk amongst the mass of letters and notes.
Solas comes toward him from the stairs, movements slow and deliberate, hands folded behind his back. His eyes take in the scenery before him—recently reinforced stone, a fixed latch on the terrace door that doesn’t quite match the rest of the filigree, a duvet on the bed that doesn’t reflect the finery that should be expected of a newly appointed mantle. Skyhold is in ruins, but it is coming together brick by brick.
For a moment there’s no sound but the whistle of mountain air against the glass, and then Solas says, “Your soldiers do not bar anyone from your quarters.”
Nyr hums, looking down at his missive again and sliding it to the side, fingers glancing the wax seal. “You think that they should?”
“I think it would be wise, in our current climate.”
Nyr takes a breath, still smiling. It’s softened by weariness, and his eyes burn as he pulls another letter in front of him, popping the seal with a knife and unfolding it. The candles around him flicker with light, with energy. They do that often, with Solas, and Nyr attributes it to his particular connection to the Fade.
His fingers slide over the corner of the parchment, and he isn’t quite reading it as he says, “And what would you think if I told you I gave them orders to allow you unrestrained access to my quarters?”
Silence. Solas doesn’t speak, but Nyr can feel the way his eyes watch, piercing, assessing every breath.
Finally, “I would think it a high honor, to be allowed to come and go so freely.”
They kissed. Two weeks prior, Solas had walked with Nyr to his quarters, and kissed him on the balcony. He had left as though the action burned, as though a fire had started before him and the only way to keep from being consumed was distance and distance alone. It had nestled under Nyr’s skin, had dogged his footsteps, lain with him in sleep, folded around the beat of his heart. Ar lath ma, vhenan, he had said.
Nyr looks up from the letter, unread, and finds Solas has come just those few feet closer. His eyes, a bright purple, look nearly red in the firelight. “Does it surprise you?”
“Many things about you surprise me, vhenan,” he says.
“Even now?”
“With every hour.”
“I must be predictable enough that you know just where to find me.”
“And what an achievement that is,” Solas says, coming closer. His hands fall forward, and the man who had first come into his room—gentle and withheld—is gone in a moment. “To know you so intimately.”
Nyr’s smile slips, skin flushing hot until the tips of his ears warm. Unbidden, as it has been, the memory of the kiss comes to him, visceral and bruising, leaving the faintest marks over his neck where they could be hidden beneath his collar. His lips part unconsciously. Craving it.
And Solas’ gaze follows the movement. Predator and prey. A toy and something to play with it. How tender he is, always on the cusp of devouring but keeping his teeth tightly clenched. Merciful.
“Solas,” Nyr says, and he doesn’t know what he wants but there is a craving to the name.
And Solas, irreverent, says, “Inquisitor.”
A title. Precious, respected, delicate and freshly offered, turned into the dangerous and sensual flick of a snake tongue. It had weight when it was laid over his shoulders, enough to crush what little confidence he had nurtured since the founding of the Inquisition. Now it settles over him, the warmth of fingers catching in the button of a shirt, virgin skin before practiced hands.
His breath catches. Solas’ palms lay against the wood of the desk, splaying but not obscuring any of his work. He is bold, and he is conscious.
An offer. Nyr knows if he places strain on a single syllable Solas will leave. A wild animal he is, all teeth and hunger, but he is easily spooked by even the barest flicker of fire.
And Nyr wants it. Two kisses have not been enough, one real and one a dream. His heart is in his throat, eager enough to choke him, and he swallows, trying to think of the right thing to say. His eyes flick down to Solas’ mouth, hands abandoning the letter.
The right words don’t come. They rarely do. Honesty is all he has, split-second decisions drive him, and it feels natural when he says, “Nyr.”
Correction, just a breath. When Nyr looks up to meet his gaze again, he finds Solas’ eyes have lowered, watching his lips form the word. His eyes soften, but he slides around the desk with a primordial elegance.
“You do not crave the title?” Solas asks, fingers following the edge of the desk as he comes to stand before Nyr’s chair.
He seems so tall, in this moment. Towering. The fire is a backlight, throwing his expression into shadow, but his head tilts just right and his eyes catch the weak candlelight like an animal in the night. Nyr’s body thrums. He says, almost weak, “Have I ever?”
A hum. Solas reaches out, fingers tentative but gaze intent. “I suppose not.”
A brush over Nyr’s hair where it’s spilling out of his half-bun, pushing messy bangs from his face until they’re whispering over his cheek, framing his eyes. Solas pauses there, and Nyr’s breath hitches. Eager. So very eager. He feels more, in this moment. Not only a man, but a work of art. Something delicate, something to behold, to be drank down with eyes alone—touch a taboo.
Solas’ fingers move, stroking at the fine skin just before Nyr’s ear until his hand has turned and his palm has cupped Nyr’s face. For a moment it doesn’t lay flat, perched as though to leave room to appreciate him those few seconds longer before obscuring his skin. He is warm.
“Breathe,” Solas says, leaning over him, eyes half-lidded and voice bordering on raspy in its softness, “vhenan.”
The words feather over Nyr’s lips, and his eyes flutter, breath halting again in his chest. How can I? he thinks, heart beating against the cage of his ribs and blood rushing in his ears. His stomach is in knots, and for a moment he wonders if it’s some residual concern from Solas’ hesitance of their relationship, coupled with Nyr’s own penchant for driving himself into the dirt at the whim of his every anxiety. And then Solas’ other hand falls to his thigh, and Nyr realizes he’s hard.
Solas’ body is braced prettily before him, and Nyr makes a half-sound of near desperation when their lips brush. Warm. Ever so slightly damp. Millimeters between them, and then Solas presses forward more, deeper, folding together. Nyr says, “I cant.”
He feels the way Solas smiles. The kiss moves to the corner of his mouth, his body flush against the back of his chair when Solas’ hand slides down his face to lay flat on his chest, holding him still. His lungs are tight in the fist of his own desire, body held in a barely-controlled stasis.
How many evenings has he imagined this, tucked away in the solitude of his room and watching the sun dip over the mountains. Cold stone and bare decor, the fire only burning because without it even his bed would be uninhabitable. Behind closed eyes Solas had come to sit by him on the couch, had slipped under the covers with him and bruised him with his lips and his hands. Marks in the shape of teeth, blood pooling under a heady mouth.
Now this, awkward between his desk and Nyr’s own body, Solas already working his lips over the skin beneath his ear, teasing at more. He sighs, and it might be a laugh. Nyr feels dizzy with it, body attuned to every idiosyncracy, greedy to know Solas half as well as he wishes he did.
Solas’ teeth tease at the lobe of Nyr’s ear, and after pausing to hear the way he barely catches a whine in the back of his throat, he murmurs, “Allow me to offer some assistance.”
His hand slides over Nyr’s thigh, up, over the hem of his pants, and then down, down, down, dragging tantalizingly slow over the shape of his cock.
Nyr gasps, eyes opening, and his hips jut forward before he can catch himself. Solas is directly before him, blocking him in, and he moves until they’re nearly nose to nose, eyes dark and smile sharp. “Good.”
Heat flares under his skin, and Nyr closes his eyes because it’s far too much to feel this way and try to process the vision before him in tandem. Good. Good, good, good, “Solas—”
Solas’ hand palms at him, and Nyr’s voice becomes weak, trailing off into a shuddering breath. His body is moving, hips pressing forward in aborted movements. The tightly-fitted fabric of his pants is constraining, turning Solas’ touch into an idea of itself. He’s felt that touch against his hand, his forearm, his face, his neck. He wants it here, wants skin against skin, wants craving to be met with craving.
“If you would have me stop,” Solas says, hand gentle against Nyr’s chest but mouth sliding back to his neck, dragging teeth against the hollow of Nyr’s throat when his head tilts back.
“Please,” Nyr manages, tight. It sounds a lot like, Don’t. His hands are curled into fists at his sides, afraid to touch Solas for fear of driving him away, but the hand between his legs rubs just right, encouragement, and Nyr grasps for Solas’ wrist, for his side. “Please, Maker—”
“The Maker is not the one you should be begging, tonight,” Solas breathes, and Nyr groans when lips wrap around his neck, sucking.
Amatus, he almost says, but he does not want to be a slave from Tevinter tonight. He wants to be just this—a man shirking his duties, giving into the simple pleasures of life, reduced to rocking hips and heavy breathing.
But vhenan seems disingenuous after everything, despite his vallaslin, and when Solas’ fingers flick open the first button of his pants he gives up and sighs, “Solas.”
“Yes, my love,” Solas says, and there’s a near reverence to him, pleased with the response he’s nurturing and prostrating himself before it all at once. The second button. The third. Solas sighs over the mark he’s just left on Nyr’s neck, and it makes Nyr’s breath catch.
Solas fumbles for a moment, shoving at Nyr’s pants and smallclothes, and Nyr blinks his eyes open, belatedly trying to help only to feel Solas’ fingers skimming his cock.
It’s barely there, but it has Nyr’s back arching with a gasp, head pressing back into the chair just to keep himself tethered. Solas makes a sound, easing him from his smallclothes, and Nyr’s hands go tight on Solas’ arm, voice catching in the back of his throat before becoming a wrecked sound.
His fingers are thin, delicate almost, despite the calluses. They wrap around him, hot skin against a cool palm, and the knotting in Nyr’s belly becomes taut enough to snap, a thread attempting to unwind on force alone.
Solas sighs, and there’s a hint of a moan on the end of it. He’s abandoned his work on Nyr’s neck in favor of watching him, admiring the shape of his own hand around Nyr’s cock where it’s exposed against the opening of his pants.
“Solas,” Nyr moans, a warning.
A slide of Solas’ hand, and a subsequent gathering of precum at the tip of his cock. Nyr turns his face away, skin flushed, laid bare like this with Solas drinking him down.
Solas slows, and then his thumb flicks over the head, practiced. Nyr’s hands claw into whatever fabric they can find, and Solas’ free hand caresses the side of his neck before curling around the nape. He says, “You are beautiful, even here...”
Melting. He must be melting. Heat washes over him like rain, dousing him until he’s nothing but a basin threatening to overturn.
He won’t last. He knows it with the slow rhythm of Solas’ fist, the way Solas cups his neck and extends his thumb to stroke over Nyr’s cheek. The tenderness of it, the low ache of his throat where the skin has been abused, the way Solas breathes, “Isalan dera na aron tuelan.”
It has been a terribly long time since he’s taken himself in hand, and he loses himself to it. There is nothing in this room but the two of them, Solas murmuring praise above him, watching and then meeting his mouth in a kiss when the desire overtakes him, only to pull back to let his eyes drop to his own hand. The wet sound of it is obscene, and Nyr would have the presence of mind to be embarrassed if Solas didn’t seem to take so much pride in it.
“Solas,” he says, voice tight. He finally opens his eyes, looking up, and finds Solas already looking back, hungry and shadowed. His thumb slips up, hand slowing, and Nyr’s hips pop forward when it presses into the slit of his cock. “Solas, I’m—”
“If you are hoping to see me exercise patience, vhenan,” Solas says, voice maddeningly even. At some point his attentions have gone from desperate to steady, “I am sorry to disappoint.”
He’s too close. Solas’ experience is belied in every movement, every choice of words, every sweet kiss laid against Nyr’s lips. Smiling as he watches him fall apart, a chase where he knows regardless of when it ends he will have his quarry.
The knot within him is tight, and Nyr thinks for a moment of his empty bed, his cold rooms, the way this will end with him alone in the dark. It has him grasping for that heat within him, expression pulled, brows drawn, wait, he wants to say, wait, please.
Solas rolls his thumb around the head, smearing the precum there. “ I have you.”
The words are sweet. So sweet. A cradle of the tongue, soothing, the last drop that has him overflowing and pulling the knot undone.
He groans, head back and throat open, as he spills over Solas’ hand. There’s a catch of breath before him as cum drips over Solas’ fingers, pooling on Nyr’s abdomen. Nyr’s hips twitch when Solas’ hand shifts.
For a moment they sit there, breathing heavily, joined only in two places where Solas’ hands are pressed to skin. Then the palm on his neck retreats, and Nyr’s eyes flutter open. He’s shaking.
“Solas,” he says, and again his voice is weak. He doesn’t know what to say.
Solas looks at him, looks down at the mess he’s made, and then at his own hand, the shine of cum there. Embarrassment floods Nyr’s face, and he tenses, feeling cold where Solas’ body had been warding off the draft. “ I’m—”
Solas lifts his hand to his mouth, tongue laving over the webbing of his hand, and Nyr’s mouth closes as his flush changes in quality.
Nyr watches him, eyes wide, and finally murmurs, “Oh.”
Heat is rekindled in an instant, and his eyes catch the barely-there flash of satisfaction. Enjoyment. And then down, where Solas’ cock is straining against the fabric of his trousers. Oh.
Solas leans in again, and the kiss is just as bruising as Nyr expects. There’s a saltiness to it that makes him moan into Solas’ mouth, and Solas flicks his tongue out over Nyr’s bottom lip before pulling away.
“Ar lath ma,” he says, with breath. His eyes are nearly black. “And thank you.”
An odd thing to say, Nyr thinks, after being wrung dry. He swallows. Tastes himself. He sighs, “I love you.”
Solas smiles, and that distance is back, the smallest, slightest lines around his eyes. Nyr’s mouth opens, quick to contest, but Solas straightens, messy hand in a fist. “I look forward to tonight,” he says.
“Solas,” Nyr says, again. Again, again, again, always ready to chase and never allowed the chance.
He’s already leaving, but there’s a glint to his eyes, mischevious and dark. “Dream well, ma vhenan.”
The room is empty, the fire weak. Nyr’s body betrays him when he stands, shrugging out of his trousers and cleaning off in the basin by his bed, hands shaking and knees unsteady. It’s cold, and he dresses down, abandoning the missives on his desk for his bed.
Cold, but he thinks of Solas’ dark eyes and warm hands, his smile, and when he closes his eyes he knows the night is not over just yet.